MOST INTERESTING FOREST PRODUCTS 141 



especially foreigners, start out for the purpose of 

 gathering chestnuts for the market and close to the 

 city quite an industry may be built up. From the 

 lower boughs the nuts may be beaten off with poles but 

 the upper limbs must be shaken. After the nuts have 

 reached the ground the leaves and debris beneath are 

 raked away in heaps and the partially opened burrs put 

 into a separate pile so that they may be examined. The 

 loose chestnuts are put into bags and later sorted in 

 order to separate the defective and wormy specimens. 

 The chestnut gatherers as a rule sell their crop by 

 weight, fifty-six pounds being the average bushel and 

 the average price received is about four cents a pound 

 or two dollars and twenty-five cents a bushel. In a good 

 chestnut country a family of four or five persons will 

 earn as much as ten dollars per day. It is a family job 

 primarily because children can be useful in sorting the 

 nuts, or extracting chestnuts from the half -open burrs. 



Practically every part of the East has its favorite 

 nut. In the Middle Atlantic States in addition to 

 chestnuts, walnuts and hickory nuts are found while in 

 the Southern States the pecan may be added to the 

 above and in the Southwest, Indians collect large 

 quantities of the edible seed of the nut pine. At the 

 present time the nut industry in this country bids 

 fair to increase and there are a few orchardists who 

 make a business of raising nuts for the market or 

 propagating pedigree trees. With large areas of in- 

 ferior mountain land throughout the Atlantic States, 

 the raising of nuts offers a splendid solution of the 

 land problem, for such a crop needs much less labor 

 than an orchard, and aside from furnishing food for 

 swine or man the lumber growth is an added profit. 



Naval Stores. In early Colonial times among the 



